Whose Parents Pay for College? | Hacker News Reader

Whose Parents Pay for College?

priceonomics.com

That's fascinating. I'm curious as to why women have less debt even without as much financial assistance from parents. I'm thinking I could be because:

  * Women go to cheaper universities
  * Women get more scholarship money / financial aid from universities
  * They pay more of it off while still in university?
  * Universities charge them less in tuition (I doubt this is true)
  * The fields in which women go are less expensive (Do universities charge different amounts for different undergrad degrees?)

Outside of that was there sampling bias? Perhaps the women population was a lot less than men sampled? Does anyone have anymore information into this?

Less financial assistance from parents != less financial assistance overall. My guess is that plenty of the women in the age range they look at (25-54) have husbands or boyfriends who assist them financially.

Women are more likely than men to get married young (while still in college) and to marry someone older than them (who might already have a job).

When my wife was in college and we were dating, I helped her out financially because I worked instead. I'm sure it's fairly common.

They tend to go into art more don't they? Isn't the typical art students GPA fairly high? That would give them even more scholarship money.

Another question I'd ask is how many semesters someone took to graduate (and number of credit hours earned).

I paid for most of college myself and graduated debt free. One of the biggest savings came from getting approval to take 21-24 credit hours worth of courses for the last two years. You pay the same price for tuition and housing for 12+ credit hours at most schools. Armed with this and the ability to handle the stress of that workload, you can halve the cost of going to college if you can do this for all four years.

I wish I had thought about doing this sooner. The reason I ended up doing it was because many of my friends were 2-3 grades above me and when I noticed that most friends had graduated I figured it would be better to get out ASAP and make new friends in the real world 2 years later.

You can take out more in student loans than just the cost of tuition. Men may just take out larger student loans, despite having the same tuition costs.

This brings up an interesting topic of conversation. My wife and I lived two very different lives. Her parents paid for her $50k a year undergrad + $??K a year grad school. She's 1 of 3, and it was the same situation for her siblings as well. Me on the other hand (1 of 3 as well) had $0 paid for, along with my siblings.

My parents believe the child is responsible for education because it's their adult life they're building. My wife's parents are the opposite- they believe it is an obligation as a parent to support college. Granted, my parents couldn't afford to pay, but it's been ingrained in me that parents are not obligated to pay for college.

Now, is there a social stigma, as a parent, NOT to pay for their child's education? We're about to have a child, and we have this discussion quite regularly.

Less important than the social stigma is the potential for placing your kids at a competitive disadvantage. Exactly what that will mean depends on how the next ~18 years unfold.

My parents told me growing up that I'd have to pay for it myself, but by the time I was graduating from high school they decided college was too expensive for someone to pay their way through on their own. So they helped out.

So given the above experience, I think it'd be good to do some math and see if there isn't a middle ground. I think there's a lot to be said for students contributing something to their own education, but I don't think that means it's realistic for them to pay for all of it.

(Assuming college makes sense for someone to begin with.)

I think education should be free and provided for by the government. But since that probably won't happen any time soon, I will at least live my own values and pay for my kids college as my parents paid for mine.

Also if you care about your child's well being (both emotionally and financially), it's much easier for the parent to start saving a small amount when the child is born per year (compound interest) then for the child to have a houses worth of debt to pay off.

Also my kids don't have to go to college if they don't want to. And if not, I guess I get to take a 150k vacation.

> I think education should be free

It's never going to be since educators for some reason are not willing to work for free.

> and provided for b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ by the taxpayer.

Why would taxpayer have to pay for the education for everyone? Judging by the size of the current student debt it does not look like a worthwhile investment.

A society may decide that its worth educating its own citizens. Several countries around the world do that.

Several countries even do that for internationals.

Of course elected officials may decide that it's worthwhile to spend larger portion of the budget to educate everyone, but why would they? What are the arguments other than "i think it should be" that may convince them and the electorate that it is a good direction to proceed?

My theory is that providing an education for free of charge to the students has a significantly better payoff for the economy as a whole as well as the individual students vs loading individual students with the burden.

Your argument is very similar to the "i think it should be" argument that I mentioned before. Are there any studies or some other justification that might substantiate that your theory is indeed true?

Does all tertiary education should be "free" for everyone? English history, art, etc? How does the price setting works: government just pays whatever educational institution asks for? Does it forces institution to accept the amount of money being provided?

Also, what does "better payoff for the economy" mean? Does it mean that the median wage rises, amount of taxes collected increases, productivity increases, something else... ?

First, if you're skeptical that the gov't should just pay educational costs with a blank check, I would agree. Our current system of paying a grant and allocating loans to students blindly is pretty stupid. It increases university cost inflation as students shopping for an education don't have the experience needed to make a good cost decision to serve as a signal to control university spending. (and their parents have out of date information) too. It would serve a better cost control as well as be administratively cheaper to pay fewer public universities directly with strings attached for low or no cost tuitions.

As to why one would want to do it, economic activity would be higher. Lets compare two cases:

One a student goes to college, ends up with $40k worth of loans, starts working a job which they start to pay back almost immediately. The loan starts to reel back in the cost of the capital almost immediately, and it offsets the net income of the student. They spend less than they would have, they save less, and have less time to compound interest on smaller savings (creating a higher social burden). In the early portion of life you have a lot of economic activity. Moving into a first apartment, then first house generates all sorts of ancillary economic activity. All of this is delayed by higher student debt, and reflected in data.

On the other path, the same student goes to college, gets the same job at the same gross income. Now though, they have more disposable income and savings. More disposable income, means more spending, which means more economic activity. The gov't, even if it goes into debt itself to fund the education, wins in the short term with more activity and more tax receipts, and in the long term - better savings translating to a lighter load on backend gov't services. Students and parents benefit, the economy benefits, the govt doubly benefits, society improves...

That the wealth of a more educated society compounds, likely in super-additive fashion. Basically, the idea is that a society full of educated people is wealthier as a whole and thus in your own interest. In the short term, it is easier to be well off if people around you are well off than if not (e.g. is way easier to be an entrepreneur or to find a well paying job if you are surrounded by other educated people). In the long term, your society gets richer and, since countries that have public education also have things like public healthcare and social security, a richer country is also very directly in your benefit when you are nearing retirement.

Note that the U.S. already buys this argument when it comes to primary and secondary education. It only seems to mostly ignore it when it comes to the university or trade school level.

The U.S. gets by without public higher education, but that might be in significant part for two reasons: accumulated private wealth in a large middle class that got rich from globalization with one of the few intact industrial bases in the post-war environment (now dwindling), immigration of educated workers from all over the world (brain drain from other countries).

Also, note that many countries with public higher education see it as a system where each individual "pays it forward" for the education of the next generation, at a moment in their lives where they have significant more economic safety than they would in their late teens. Simply put: "I'll pay for the education of the next generation, because the previous generation paid for mine". This is something which the U.S. does within families anyways, but some other countries do collectively, resulting, again, in compounded gains from a more educated society and cheaper education costs due to collective bargaining. Things like fancy dorms and millionaire school administrators are hard to justify when they are paid out of the paystub of your average nurse and construction worker...

Don't get me wrong, I did my undergrad in a (developing) country with public higher education and my graduate studies in the U.S. (on school support). There are definitely benefits to the U.S. system if you have the money or are in the top percentile for talent/luck. But overall, for the majority, the lack of a strong free public education option is a huge disadvantage, it seems to me, even after six years here, that this is one of those things where the U.S. does well despite of it, rather than because of it. Like private healthcare and lack of public transportation.

Personally, I would do whatever you think best sets up your child for success. In my case, it's unfathomable in my family culture to not pay for college for the child if you're financially able because that is what we believe will set up the child for success - to be able to freely seek out higher education and realize their full potential without worry of debt and finances. However, the counter point is that there are those that feel the financial constraints will make your child stronger and instill in them a stronger work ethic and appreciation for what they have. An upbringing that combines both elements is likely ideal, but personally I chose to instill the latter values in different ways that doesn't cripple my child with debt.

You could maybe agree to pay for the lowest cost state school and the cheapest housing arrangement. A resourceful kid may also find the cheap loopholes for books, faking commuter status to avoid overpriced dorms or food plans, etc.

"social stigma" is between your own ears. Don't let other people tell you how to parent your child.

I'm glad you addressed the issue of number of siblings. The article didn't slice things that way, and I think that makes huge difference. $Tuition*N can mount up. In my case, since my father died in a farm machinery accident when I was young, I drew social security survivor benefits. My mom stashed that away for college, even though it meant a few lean years for the family as my older brother dropped out of college to hold the farm together. He was successful, and I was able to pay for a decent engineering degree at a modestly priced state university. Private schools were not in the cards. My wife also came from a family of modest means, and she was the guru of scholarship applications. She found enough to cover a state university at out-of-state tuition rates. We both graduated debt-free.

Graduating debt-free made a huge difference in our lives, and we wanted to do the same for our (one) child. Who happened to get in to MIT, not exactly cheap. So since we have the means, and only have to do it for one, we are stepping up to it. I can't say we could do the same for N>2 children.

Personally, I don't see paying for college as a parental obligation. Driving some financial sense into your children is, though. Counseling against excessive loans, especially for degrees that don't pay off (art history is cool and all, but I'd not take on a lot of debt for that degree). Someone else suggested something like covering costs of the local state university, with child coming up with the difference if they want something better. I can respect that choice.

Nowadays it is implicitly expected by most top universities that parents WILL pay for their children's education, and sometimes explicitly stated when it comes to applying for financial aid. I wouldn't expect any student to pay the astronomical tuition for college (50K x 4 years) all by themselves without any assistance.

I believe your parents' income is a FAFSA question if you are under 22 or thereabouts.

There's a stigma if you're capable of paying for all or part of college and you don't. But if you can't there isn't.

But I do think its a good idea to have them pay for some of it regardless - either loan repayment after graduation or by working while going to school. My parents floated the idea of me working my first year but I didn't want to. I had 18 hrs of class and there was too much course work since it was designed to weed people out to worry about making some small hourly on a part-time job. I paid a year of school after I graduated.

This would be a lot more useful with information on distribution of scholarships (and more generally, the distribution of all means of financing among these groups).

For example, the data points showing that that men receive more help from their parents and graduate with higher levels of debt seems contradictory absent additional factors not considered.

I was thinking the same. There is a missing variable that makes this article incomplete.

Spousal support? They look at people age 25-54, a lot of them have to be married, and since men earn more and the majority of marriages are heterosexual, you'd expect more women to be supported by their spouses through college.

They did not consider at least three very important factors: field of dergree, type of institution, age.

Either that 45% number for no help is high or I seriously need to check my privilege.

I knew my situation was somewhat rare, but I didn't know it was 9% rare.

I'm in that 45%, though I used military benefits to cover it. So really, American taxpayers as a whole paid for my bachelor degree.

Well, you earned it! :)

My wife paid her own way through college despite her parents being solidly middle/upper middle class. It's more common than I thought (being in that 9%).

You are lucky.

I wish I could have just enjoyed college without worrying about food, gas, and keeping a roof over my head.

Working to pay for all that as a science major was no easy task. I cut corners and sometimes took too many credits to graduate in a timely manner.

It wasn't Animal House or Legally Blonde.

I met a guy in college who was trying to take vector calc, physics, and data structures and algorithms, while supporting himself in San Diego working part time at Nordstrom. He had to drop data structures. I didn't stay in touch, of course I hope he did alright.

I find it depressing that a promising student, who has gained entry into a college like UCSD with good grades in math and basic CS, is struggling to afford to continue. We live in a state where multi multi billionaires lament the shortage of highly educated engineers (who are essential to their billions), but this guy has to drop out because he's having trouble balancing paying the rent with a very rigorous curriculum.

I managed to get about 70% of my entire undergrad (tuition, books, and living expenses) covered by academic scholarships.

Even with working every summer, every Christmas break, and through 3 of the 4 years while at school, I still had to miss many classes to pick up extra shifts at work (thankfully only a handful of courses are strict about attendance, so my GPA only suffered by about ~0.3). And I still came out with the "average student loan debt" of about 22k.

Unfortunately, despite how "smart" I am. I was too retarded to see what a mistake the life sciences were and I'm still working on that debt.

College is a scam if you're at least decently intelligent. It's an 80k stamp.

Neither my wife or I received any money.

We've setup 529's for the kids, but it won't be enough to cover the full cost, even for a Cal State school.

Don't underestimate the power of compound interest. My dad tells me like this: Every time you take your kid to a fast food place, get him lemon water and put the soda money into the college fund. Small stuff like this really adds up over 18 years.

I have a loan from my parents... But that's just because I'm not allowed to borrow more than $5k per year. My tuition is around $35k/year and I have some scholarships but... Expensive. And since the government says my family can contribute an absurd amount of money, I just have to pay them back...

How much does each degree rake in per semester, and how many staff are required to run that semester, It would be very interesting to see the flow of money into a university and where it is actually spent.

Who is parents pay for the college's yo?

My parents are paying for my college, but I'm 22 now and 2 quarters into a second run at college. The first go around I went on the state of Washington's dime (Running Start, only had to pay $200 in fees plus books), and had a spotty experience with a GPA to match (3.9 in one class, 0.0 in another).

This go around I fully researched what I needed to take, and plotted my course in the most economical way possible. Currently at North Seattle College we're talking about a bit under $1700 a quarter in costs for 15 credit hours, which will increase to $5,530 at UW Bothell 3 quarters from now.

I am wholly unenthusiastic for this significant price bump, but at the very least my parents have decided to fund my second attempt, so hopefully, come late 2019 I'll have an Applied Computing degree or better (depending how Calc 2 goes...). Gonna spend $41k, mainly paying UW so I can get my damn receipt.

If a degree weren't so important when it comes to getting a job, I'd likely go without, but the earnings hit in the Seattle market is so severe that it makes sense to invest in a degree. $60k to $80k w/o a degree, versus $120k with a degree is pretty clear cut.

I assume at some point I'll end up financially supporting my parents, but that is (hopefully) ~18 years away. Supposedly there have good pensions & have saved a bit, but who really knows?

My uncle paid for my college. My Uncle Sam that is, and it was called the G.I. Bill.

whose?

Who's parents didn't make sure they took some English classes...

And then became a professional writer...

Sorry, that was my bad fiddling around with the title. Corrected it.

The article still has it in the title. I guess we ha've lost. Apostrophe's are unstoppable.

Naturally. What's on second.

Got it at last.

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